False Prophet
by coldneedles
Summary: They never talk about it again and now it’s just a secret between Hannah and a dead girl. A moment with Melissa that Hannah can’t forget. Just a one-shot. Hannah/Melissa.


**False Prophet**

**Pairing:** Hannah/Melissa (although only vaguely), some mention of Hannah/Danny.  
**Summary:** _They never talk about it again and now it's just a secret between Hannah and a dead girl. _A moment with Melissa that Hannah can't forget. Just a one-shot.  
**Warnings: **Deals with anorexia and therefore may trigger, although it does not intend to glorify or promote eating disorders.

* * *

They never talk about it again and now it's just a secret between Hannah and a dead girl.

It happens one day in late summer.

Hannah is hungry and Melissa is lying in a bikini on her bed, piles of clothes that they've tried on around her. The window is open, the curtains billowing out in the breeze. Hannah shivers. She's cold all the time now, but that's alright because Melissa says that it burns calories.

She's staring at Melissa enviously. She has the feeling that she could touch her body anywhere and she wouldn't find any fat, only hard bone and toned flesh. She's hard in every sense of the word, hard with other people, hard on herself. Hard voice, lecturing Hannah, telling her what to do. Her voice chimes in with all the thoughts in Hannah's head.

Hannah licks her lips; they're awfully dry. She's hungry. Food is a constant thought. Funny that its deprivation can make you dream of it all the time; dancing in front of your eyes as if it's on one of those conveyer belts they have in upmarket sushi restaurants.

Melissa's bikini is chocolate coloured. It matches her eyes. Her skin is vanilla pale. Hannah thinks about ice-cream and counts Melissa's ribs. She'd like to reach over and touch her, slide her fingers between the hollows, run her hands down her spine. Instead she gets a grip and wonders if Melissa thinks about food in the same way, or whether it's just Hannah, greedy pig that she is.

* * *

One night she walked in on Melissa standing in the kitchen with the fridge door open, giving off the only light in the room. She was sticking her bony fingers in a pickle jar; the sole occupant of the fridge at this point. Melissa licked her fingers of the vinegar that was dripping down like discoloured tears. She turned to Hannah and for her a moment her eyes were dark and helpless, her face stark in the fluorescent glow of the light.

Hannah wanted to hug her, wanted to cup her hands around her perfect cheek bones and tell Melissa all the things she usually said to Hannah. It'd all be alright, it'd all be alright, a few pounds more and then you'll see, you're stunning, you're going to be stunning-

But then Melissa sniffed, told Hannah not to sneak up on her like that again. And then it was inconceivable, laughable that Melissa would have ever been weak or doubting. Hannah must have imagined it.

* * *

Now, in Hannah's chilly room, Melissa is stretching out like a cat. Hannah is hunched over in a bikini also, knees pulled up to her chest. Her thighs are disgusting, her stomach obscene next to Melissa's. It feels like every cell in her body is swollen and corpulent. If Melissa is hard then Hannah is soft, weak and needy, mouldable, lets people walk all over her.

"Let me see you," Melissa says and Hannah reluctantly unfolds herself, like she's exposing a secret shame written in a diary.

Melissa pinches her stomach. It hurts, but her touch then becomes more of a caress, snaking over Hannah's hip bones that have only just started to jut out. Then she's touching Hannah's cheeks. Hannah has always said that they are too chubby, hamster-like and they're one of the many reasons why she'll never be beautiful, never be a model, never be like Melissa, never never never-

"You're looking good," Melissa says, breath hot and sour and close against Hannah's face "only a bit more work to do and then-"

Hannah really wants to find out what will happen then, but she never does because suddenly she's kissing Melissa hungrily, desperately. Right now, she doesn't want to be like Melissa so much as to be enveloped by her, under her skin and in her pores. She doesn't want to need anything but Melissa.

The strangest thing is that Melissa's kiss is not hard, but soft and gentle. Her mouth tastes metallic, sour, but it's familiar and they don't pull away and Melissa has her hand wound through Hannah's thinning hair and suddenly everything is alright, everything is going to be alright. Melissa is like some angel, weightless and swooping down to save Hannah from her fat, her dysfunctional family, her messed up life. Just a few pounds more and the world with its expectations and demands will not be able to touch them.

Finally Melissa breaks away and they both lie down, breathing hard and staring at the cracks on the ceiling. Hannah feels almost divorced from her body already, floating and faint and dissolving away like sugar in a cup of tea.

* * *

They never talk about it again and now it's just a secret between Hannah and a dead girl.

She doesn't tell Danny, she doesn't tell her family, she doesn't tell her therapist, she doesn't tell it to the group of half-dead girls (all thinner than her, goddamn it) sat in a circle at the hospital. They wouldn't understand.

Hannah doesn't think Melissa is an angel anymore and if she was a prophet she'd have to be a false one. You can tell a false prophet by their fruits and in the end Melissa's were all bad. Her hair falling out in clumps, blood rushing to the head and almost fainting every time she stood up, the acid burn and painful grate of her fingers against her throat-

That's not even counting the things that are too painful to think about head on: Melissa collapsing dead in her hallway, being sectioned, all that time in the hospital.

Hannah cannot go back, but sometimes it feels like half of her is still stuck in a parallel world with a ghost, memories of that summer swirling around her. Real life, beyond the numbing film of starving, is messy and sometimes the siren call of sinking into her own skin and shrunken flesh is hard to resist.

Melissa was a false prophet, but sometimes Hannah would still like to believe that the solution to life is as simple as starving. There's a gap where that belief used to be that Danny, that therapy, that anti-depressants, that her friends and family can neither touch nor fill.

Hannah has to only hope that it will get smaller with time.


End file.
